Unsent
by Idiot Jello
Summary: Rose's declaration of love soon leads to her departure from the TARDIS, and not everything is as it seems back on Earth. Chapter 7: "Tweed. She doesn't like tweed. It looks itchy and reminds her of crotchety old people."
1. What Could Be

"_Basically, she said she wants somebody who doesn't just live in the moment, but who considers the future. What's wrong with the moment?"_

"_Nothing."_

"_But?"_

"_But it's nice, every once in a while, to think about the future."_

* * *

The TARDIS is dark.

Shadows fall ominously across alien metal, the only illumination the blue-green glow of the console pillar. He walks, his footfalls sounding in dull thuds as he circles the console. He looks, up and down and left to right and sees what is, what was, and what ever could be.

So many possibilities – the walls are bursting with them. Memories, of laughter and death and loneliness, they too seem to rise and linger in the air. Then he brings himself back to the present, and nothing is there except stillness.

There is a sound. He looks up to see her standing in the doorway.

"We need to talk," she says, brushing her blonde hair away from her eyes.

0000

The kitchen is bright, the not-quite-fluorescent lights a stark contrast to the console room's gloom. He sits, the unstable folding chair wobbling from the new weight. She sits, too, and stares at him from across the table.

Now, in the light, he is able to see the details. Rose's eyes are puffy and have dark circles, and her nose is red. She's been crying. Right now, however, her expression is even and somber.

"I love you." The words slip from her mouth so easily, too easily, and the Doctor wonders if he's imagined them.

"What?"

"I love you. Romantically. And now it's time to talk." Rose looks at him, expectant.

He doesn't know what to say. Obviously, having a relationship with a human is impossible, so the only answer is no. But somehow, it's not a human. It's Rose.

"I can't." The answer is rather automatic. A sort of fire flares in Rose, and she leans into the table, her expression now accusing.

"You can. I know, Doctor, that I'm a human. I'm only gonna live for another fifty years or whatever, and you're gonna be sad when I'm gone. But why does that stop you? I know I'm just a moment that's gonna past, but why can't you just let us be? Live in the moment, for awhile, okay?"

It's a well-constructed argument, complete with a metaphor and a condescending tone. Well-constructed, of course, by a human's standards.

He closes his eyes, remembering what was, envisioning the day when Rose Tyler's hair was longer, the day when shop-window dummies attacked London, and the moment when he had no worries in the world as he ran with her. He thinks of the day she met Sarah Jane, the day she accused him of eventually leaving her, thinks of the moment when he saw her realize that this was the way it had to be. He opens his eyes, and sees her, all pink and yellow, and sees what could be.

"Moments pass," he says abruptly. He does not allow himself to think about what it would be like to not hold anything back from her.

"Then there's a new moment," she replies, not missing a beat, her tone a valiant attempt at reassurance.

The Doctor shakes his head, unable to meet her eyes and almost chuckling at his patheticness. "No. There's not going to be a new moment when you pass. My other companions, they passed because I let them. You—Rose, you're different."

From the silence, he can tell that he's awed her. He knows that she's become used to the idea that he is nearly eternal. To discover that the Doctor wouldn't allow himself to move on from her – he imagines the thought to be groundbreaking.

"Good different or bad different?"

He smiles. She's trying to be clever, to trick him into happiness. It's not going to work, and he doesn't look at her.

Eight seconds pass before she speaks again.

"Well, I'm not just going to sit here and ignore everything we've said. If you can't love me, then I have to leave, right?"

She's rather practical, he notices, for someone with tears streaming down their face. Still, he can't say anything. He can hear her crying as she stands up and leaves.

0000

He sets the coordinates for Earth. For a moment, he pretends that today is like any other day. Rose has convinced him to bring her home to see Jackie. He'll grumble and she'll joke and Jackie will be far too…_Jackie_ for his tastes and then they'll walk back to the TARDIS laughing all the way.

The fantasy passes, and he sees Rose, holding her rucksack in one hand, and a suitcase he bought her in New Ternocht in the other.

The Doctor the pulls the lever, and within seconds they are outside the Powell Estates on Earth.

This is it.

Rose walks, sniffing, toward the TARDIS doors but stops, just before the ramp. "Doctor…" she falters.

For once, he has no idea what she could possibly say.

"I…I need…" she stumbles. "Say goodbye to me."

"What?"

"Just…say goodbye. I'm leaving, you have to say goodbye." Rose looks at him. She just _looks_ at him.

"I can't."

She breaks her gaze. "I am a moment," she says. "I come, I stay, and I pass. Living in the moment – it's fun and all, but eventually you have to just let it go. I don't want to be with you if you're just going to kill yourself or something after I'm dead. That's not – you're just better than that sort of thing."

She doesn't understand. He's saved many lives, sacrificed so much for the universe, that it almost doesn't mean anything anymore if there isn't anyone by his side. And why should he curse himself with the eventual pain if he could just die when she does?

He could tell her this. He knows it wouldn't change anything.

"I don't suppose I could just promise to not kill myself and you'd stay?"

"It's better this way."

His brow furrows, and he exhales. He wishes this were a dream. It's not.

"You said you'd stay with me forever."

The Doctor watches Rose's expression. He can only see resignation – the kind of resignation he's experienced each time he's left something behind.

"I lied," she says, and steps through the TARDIS doors for the last time.

He doesn't dematerialize immediately. He stops, and looks: up and down and left to right. He sees what was, what is, and what might've happened if he just said those three words back and left everything unsaid.

He tries, but to no avail. No color of possibility explodes in his mind; no bright memory resurfaces.

The TARDIS is dark.

* * *

"_So let me get this straight. To be together, then it has to be all about the future?"_

"_Yeah."_

"_So, this, right now, this isn't together?"_

"_It was a moment. A great moment, but like all great moments, it passed."_


	2. FortyTwo Seconds

**2**

"_What time is it there?"_

"_What time is it here? Um, we're in the same time zone."_

"_Um, oh yeah, right."_

* * *

Stepping out of the TARDIS doors has always inspired a thrill within her, even if she is only stepping out onto the pavement outside the Powell Estates. Now, however, as her left foot aligns itself with its right counterpart, and the sound of the police box's doors slamming resounds in her ears, she can't help but detect a note of finality in the situation. There is a moment where she pauses, where all those barriers she had built against her own selfishness crumble into mere dust. She imagines what would happen if she just stepped back inside and allowed the Doctor to give in to all those self-destructing tendencies, allowed that slow corruption of his sense of right and wrong to spread and consume him.

No. Rose couldn't do that, not to him. The Doctor, she has learned, is very much a god in some ways. In the same ways, he is a slave, a puppet, and an individual. She's accepted this; she knows that when it comes down to the universe or Rose, it _has_ to be the universe. When he told her that he wasn't going to forget her – that he'd rather _die _than forget her, she knew she had to leave. The Doctor wasn't meant to off himself over some human, and if he didn't realize that, then her worst fears are confirmed. Rose Tyler has corrupted him, entwined him into her snare of hope and joy and selfishness while he was just oh so vulnerable and now he's intoxicated with the difference.

She feels sick thinking about it. It sounds as if she's poisoned him or something. But the worst part is that she knows it's all true.

Ironically, just as she concludes this train of thought, the TARDIS' engines sound and Rose hears the familiar noise of metal grinding against time. She doesn't need to look behind her shoulder to know that the TARDIS is dematerializing, so instead she looks around.

The sky is harsh white, the buildings around her gray and dull red, the whole picture forming a sloppy cityscape. The grass is green, with just the beginning of brown at its tips. In the distance, she hears traffic and some neighbor screaming at her husband.

The whole scene is too familiar for her liking. It was almost as if she'd dreamt it all, and it's only just now that she's waking up. It's like she never left.

She vows, right then and there, to never forget him, even if she did imagine it all.

0000

Mum, of course, is all about tea and the salon and who's dating whom on that soap she supposedly loathes and yet watches religiously.

"I swear, it's like they've got a drug or something in the telly. I mean, it's just drivel and things but I just _got_ to know if the father Jillian's baby really is the man in the masquerade. Ooh—is that something I should worry about? You know, with all you tell me it's not crazy to think they've got drugs in the telly. Could it be aliens or something?"

Rose nods. "Y—wait. Mum, there aren't aliens in the telly."

Jackie is affronted. "Well, don't be like that about it. What about that thing you told me about with the brainwashing on T.V. with the satellite that had the monster in the ceiling?"

"You mean the Jagrafess? Mum, that's different."

"How, exactly?" Jackie isn't irritated anymore, and she blinks a slow, calculating blink as she observes her daughter's face. Rose has seen that look before.

"It just…is."

"Rose, where's the Doctor?"

A silence falls between them – an occurrence so uncommon that it's unsettling.

"Is he coming back?"

Rose can't bring herself to speak. Her expressions curls, and she chokes on an ugly-sounding sob as she turns toward her mother.

"Rose? What happened? What'd he do to you?"

She sobs once more, almost laughing. Through her hiccups, she says, "It's not him, Mum. It was all me. I've," Rose lifts her gaze to meet her mother's. "I've ruined him."

0000

Time does not halt when Rose Tyler stepped out the TARDIS doors. Mercilessly, it continues to tick by. The Doctor can envision the rest of his life quiet clearly – full of excitement and happiness and adventure and sadness and loneliness. A long winding road waits for him. It would be brilliant. It would be without Rose.

He knew, from experience, that this pain that pulled at his very seams, nearly undoing him every second would not cease anytime soon. He allows one tear to fall silently down his cheek as he exhaled, shocked by his loss.

For once, the Doctor mourns. He allows himself to face reality and be scared senseless by it. Then he opens his eyes, and pulls down the dematerialization lever.

The sound of the TARDIS engines soon grinds to a halt. There is a moment before he dashes through the TARDIS doors, where he contemplates going back to the Powell Estates. Forty-two seconds, he calculates – it would take him only forty-two seconds to return to her. The smile of hers he sees in his mind is almost tangible. Almost. Forty-two seconds.

"Stop it," the Doctor tells himself. He runs down the ramp and out the door, fleeing from the cold reality that was now infused in his life.

0000

It has been a day of nothing at all. Jackie had gone to work, feeling that her daughter needed some time for reality to sink back in. She was right. Rose spent the entire day watching reruns of EastEnders and chowing down on microwave popcorn. She never once touched the phone to call Shareen or Liz or the rest of her gang she had left behind. When all there was on the telly was infomercials, she turned it off and simply let her mind wander. She took a shower. Ate some more.

Now, she was playing solitaire on the kitchen table. She was losing. Rose never had actually learned any strategy or anything. Somehow, it ruined the fun. Somehow, just jumping in without a clue was more appealing than obsessing over a plan or whatever. _How very Doctor of me_, she muses.

Abruptly, she drops the card she was holding. "Solitaire is boring," Rose says to the empty air, and leaves the kitchen, not bothering to clean up the game.

She enters her old room. Teen magazines and laundry litter the place. It doesn't surprise Rose that Jackie never bothered to clean it up. It looks weird to her, in a way. Sure, it's a teenager's room, but it doesn't feel like her room. Is she not a teenager?

Rose smooths out her old pink comforter and sits on her old bed. She thinks of what happened in the kitchen. Maybe she's doing this wrong. Maybe she shouldn't go all repressed. Maybe she should think of the Doctor, just let all her pass out in one big go and try to heal and recover from there.

She tries it, squeezing her eyes shuts and just remembers.

The way his old leather jacket smelled. The way his old blue eyes shined. The way it felt when he went off with that tree. The way it felt when he said that she was the best. The way her hand burned from hanging from a barrage balloon. The way it felt when he exploded and his face changed. The way his new voice trusted her. The way he talked to her like there was no one else in the world, even though the Sycorax leader stood only a few meters away. The way apple grass smelled. The way that werewolf reminded her of gold. The way she realized she was just another Sarah Jane. The way he told her that she was not, and the way that she didn't believe him. The way it felt when he left her. The way it felt to see her father alive, again. The way it felt when Mickey left her. They way her tears burned when she stuggled to work out if she should tell him or not. The way her declaration turned itself on its head. The way it felt to leave him.

Her eyes shoot open. Barrage balloons. Gas-mask zombies. Jack Harkness. But – he's dead, Jack's dead, isn't he?

Werewolves. Queen Victoria. The Torchwood Estate.

Rose blinks. What is happening? It is almost if these memories were being forced at her. Is there something in her head? Suddenly, the whole idea that this force wanted to harm her seems ridiculous. She can't even bring herself to be wary.

Moving on, Rose decides that whatever this force was, it wants to tell her something. Werewolves and Jack. What could it mean? _Time for some Googling_, she thinks. _I bet I could go to that library two streets over. _

Rose almost smiles. Not one day after leaving the Doctor, she invents this whole new mystery for her to solve. The smile fades. Is it all just in her head? Something her subconscious cooked up to entertain her because it knew nothing on Earth could thrill her like traveling did?

Rose sighs. Sometimes, she thinks she thinks too much. Sometime, she thinks that she's become too much like the Doctor.

She wonders if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Both, she decides, after a moment or two of contemplation. Suddenly, Rose's whole body lurches in a hysterical half-laugh half-sob. She is stilling crying when Jackie returns.

* * *

"_How far away did you think we were?"_

"_I don't know. It felt far."_

"…_Yeah."_


	3. Torchwood

**_A/N_**: For those who don't understand the bits in the beginnign and end of each chapter, you must not watch a lot of American T.V. If anyone can guess what the quotes are from, I'll give you a virtual cookie. ;)

--

**3**

_"I thought you were too screwed up to love anyone. I was wrong. You just couldn't love me. That's okay, I'm happy for you."_

* * *

"Jack, you should see this." Toshiko Sato waves from her workplace.

"What is it?" the Captain calls, halfway through a very delicious doughnut Ianto had presented him three minutes ago.

"A woman."

"Well, that's not anything special. What's she doing?" Licking the last of the crumbs from his fingers, Jack approached Nosh's monitor.

Tosh pointed to the screen. "She's looking directly at the camera. The _hidden_ camera."

As if on cue, the woman gave a little wave and an accompanying grin. Jack widens his eyes. It can't be.

The woman swipes off her sunglasses and opens her mouth.

"Do you have audio on this?" Jack questions urgently.

"Yeah," says Tosh, confused by his urgency. She flips a switch and a hauntingly familiar voice is heard throughout the ship's speakers.

"_Oi! Captain! I know you're up there. Let me in!"_

The woman pointedly walks over to the invisible lift. Tosh looks to Jack in amazement. "How does – she can't – who _is_ she?"

Jack smiles. "An old friend. Let her in."

0000

All members of Torchwood three gather at the door to greet the mysterious stranger from Jack's past.

When the lift doors slide open, they reveal not a woman – more of a girl. Her hair is dyed an obnoxious shade of blonde and her sunglasses were most likely purchased from the convenience store. Her jeans are worn and her red top is slightly faded. It is of no question that she isn't the usual Torchwood visitor; not the usual stuffy Torchwood One executive in name brands at all. What is the most startling though is her smile – wide and gleeful. Not two seconds pass before she flings herself into Jack's arms.

"I missed you!" she exclaims. Jack simply laughs, laughs as though he's still young.

When she withdraws, the Captain introduces her. "Team, this is Rose Tyler. Rose, this is Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper, Gwen Cooper, and Ianto Jones."

"Hi," she says, offering a smile. Jack's team smiles back, curiosity disguising itself under friendliness. Suddenly, it's awkward. "So," Rose says, "Jack. We've got some things to talk about." Jack nods. "Like why you're not dead," she adds, slightly accusatory.

"Like why the Doctor isn't with you," he returns, deflecting. He glances to his team. "Come into my office."

0000

Despite all previous indicators, once Rose and the Captain were in his office, almost nothing happened. It was all very anti-climatic to Rose, but really, she asks herself, what was she expecting? That somehow, the moment she stepped into Jack's office, her subconscious would wave around a huge red flag telling her what the hell those visions meant? Not very bloody likely.

Well. There wasn't any use in sitting here like two dopes. Looking up, she's about to explain her presence to Jack, but he interrupts her before she can even open her mouth.

"You know, I had planned on being all enigmatic and shit, but I know you get enough of that from the Doctor. Point is, I'm immortal. I can't die."

She opens her mouth, to console him, but she can't imagine how. Oh, you can't die? You're doomed to a never-ending existence where all that you love and cherish will ultimately be taken away from you? That sucks. Fancy a hug? Somehow, she doesn't think that will go over well.

Jack is just as unnerved as her. Even after all this time, merely thinking about his fate still sends an unpleasant chill through his spine. He can't quite tell how much time has passed since he last saw Rose; if she is still that naive teenager who he wine n' dined in 1941. He knows that he trusts her, though, and that she deserves to know. Before she can offer any consolation, he speaks once more.

"And it's all thanks to you, Rose Tyler."

It's funny, how that expression on her young face triggers something bitter within him. He loves her, he does, but she's killed him in every sense of the word except the obvious. Jack watches her face; a slow transition from shock to anguish, and smiles.

It's absolutely hilarious.

0000

Gwen tilts her head at a painful angle, trying to catch a glimpse through the blinds of Jack's office without drawing too much suspicion.

"What do you think they're talking about?" She glances over to Tosh, who is pretending to busy herself by monitoring rift activity.

"I'm sure I have no idea."

Gwen rolls her eyes at Tosh's dismissal. "Right."

"Well, I don't." Tosh says, defensive.

"Yeah, but, wouldn't you like to find out?" Gwen looks over to her, half-smiling in encouragement.

Tosh looks away from her monitor, on verge of saying something. But before she has the chance, both of the women's attention is snatched away by the muted shouting that resonates, bouncing off the walls of hub and creating echoes, all originating from Jack's office.

0000

"What the hell?!" Rose is standing now, with fury etched in her features and in her stance. She stares at Jack, whom is too infuriatingly calm for her tastes at the moment. "He left you – he _left _you like a zillion years in the future and you're just…sitting here doing _nothing_!" Her anger is now directed at him.

Jack stands now, too. "Doing nothing? Rose, I'm working my damn ass off every day to keep this primitive Earth safe. And don't start on the Doctor. There's a reason why'm in Cardiff. I've got scanners and everything. The Doctor, he's gonna stop by someday, a _pit stop_, and believe me, when I catch up to him, I'll punch the hell out of him for what he did to me."

Rose ducks her head, shaking it back in forth, and looks back up to him. She exhales, some sort of half-laugh and half-sob. "I thought you died." There are tears in her eyes. "He never told me. He just – I thought you were dead. You…you…"

Jack approaches her, tentatively encircling her in his arms while she sobs into his chest. This Rose may be older, but she seems to be a lot weaker than the old one he used to know. Something has happened, something that has torn his adored Rose's confidence to shreds.

"Whap happened?" The words drift rather uselessly from his mouth, but she answers anyway.

"He's died. Gone, and replaced by someone else." Rose swallows. "A new man."

"Regeneration?" Jack guesses.

"You know about that, then?" she asks, drawing away from him.

"Let's just say I've done my fair share of homework in the past two hundred years."

"Two hundred years," Rose repeats, a thinly veiled question. Jack shakes his head no.

"Enough about me. Tell me your story."

So she does. She tells him about Robot Santas and the Sycorax. She tells him about the satsuma, and the whole Lion King monologue. She tells him about the werewolf, and Queen Victoria. She tells him about Sarah Jane and K-9, and she nearly starts crying when she tells him about clockwork monsters that stalked a seventeenth century French girl. She tells him how Mickey broke her heart.

Here she pauses, faced with those painful memories that so relentlessly seem to haunt her.

"I was _so _stupid. I mean, like, if they're levels of stupid, it's kinda down there with jumping off a cliff, or y'know, trying to make friends with a Dalek." She takes to chuckle at her own joke, though for the life of her she can't think of why it's funny. "I fell in love with him Jack. And I told him. I told him! Isn't that hilarious?"

Jack has never seen so much pain in her eyes. He swallows. It would be rather of an understatement to say that this was a bit over-whelming. "And he said that you couldn't be together, right? So you left?"

Rose laughs again. "Yeah, not quite. He told me we couldn't be together because when I died, he would want to die too – like I would be the only thing that mattered to him, and without me, he would have nothing to live for. That's wrong, Jack, that's just wrong. You know, he was so different when he regenerated, and I kind of assumed he was over the worst of the Time War and he wasn't as vulnerable. But he's not…he's still a broken man. And I was making it worse. I mean, he's lost everything. The Time Lords, Gallifrey. But he still has that thing that makes him the Doctor – he knows right and wrong, and if I had stayed with him, he'd lose that too. I couldn't do that to him."

She looks up to him once more, and he can't quite believe he's seeing those big hazel eyes once more, even though they have been talking for at least two hours. Her eyes search his, and he knows she's looking for his approval.

"So you left," he says.

"So I left," she repeats.

The air is deceptively casual.

"That's rather self-sacrificing of you," he remarks.

"Maybe," Rose says, "or maybe I'm just a coward."

0000

Rose slinks away from the party, mobile in hand. Jack had treated her and his team to the local bar or club or whatever, and they had been having a laugh. It's rather irritatingly clear that Jack had been trying to distract her from the whole Doctor thing, but she figures there isn't much he could do instead anyways.

Flipping her mobile open, she scrolls through her contacts, very consciously forces herself to not think about the "TARDIS" contact. Finding her mum, she selects and within moments the phone is ringing.

"_Rose, sweetheart, it's nearly 1 A.M.! I coulda been sleeping."_

She laughs. "Well obviously your not, cause you picked up the phone. I just wanted to let you know that I'll be in Cardiff for the next week at least."

"_Alrigh'. Make sure that Captain of yours treats ya right._"

"Yeah. Okay. See you."

"_See you._"

Rose closes her phone and slumps against the alley wall. Her eyes close, and she breathes.

"I thought we were missing someone."

Rose jumps away from the walk, startled. To her surprise, it's not Jack that's confronting her. "Yeah. Had to call my mum, you know. Owen, right?"

"Yep. So are you gonna join Torchwood now?" His eyes study her face appreciatively. Rose nearly laughs. She hasn't known this Owen very long, but she can guess that subtly isn't one of his finest qualities.

"Dunno. Haven't thought about it at all, actually," she answers truthfully. This whole thing is rather alarmingly spontaneous, but she can't quite bring herself to be surprised. After all, who was the one who ran off with a 900-year-old alien on a whim without even knowing his name?

"Oh."

"Oh?"

Owen tears his gaze away from her face. "Well, whenever we meet one of Jack's _old friends_, they don't always just 'want to catch up' and share a cup o' tea. In fact, a lot of their reunion plans involve taking over the world at some point. You haven't got that in store, have you?"

Rose did laugh now. "Yeah, not quite. That was the Time Agency, wasn't it?" She could almost feel the bloom of his suspicion.

"You know about that, do you?"

Shaking her head, "No. Me? A Time Agent?" Rose snorts. "Yeah, that whole thing got corrupted pretty fast, from what Jack tells me. Did you know he was a con man when I first met him?" His surprise is evident, but his expression soon melts into bemusement. "Right, bet I wasn't s'posed to tell you that."

"Yeah, Jack likes to play the enigma card. A lot."

Rose smiles. "That's just too funny."

Owen tilts his head. "Why is that?"

"Oh it's just, we have this mutual friend, you see, who…" Her smile drops. "Nothing. It's nothing."

Owen turns his head away, smiling to himself. "Well, I'll chose ignore that little tidbit of hypocrisy, and instead'll ask you – who are you?"

"An old friend." She says, automatically. He just looks at her, and, humbled, she feels obligated to continue. "Well, Jack and I, we used to travel with this man. And the man, he left Jack, and never told me. I thought Jack dead, and it's only just now that I've left the man, too."

"I'm assuming that 'traveling' doesn't just mean 'popped down to Paris for a bit?'"

"Something like that." Rose looks up, and sees Owen smiling, and though she has no idea why, she smiles, too.

* * *

_"I still think true love's out there…it's just very far away. Possibly in another galaxy. We may need to develop faster than light travel before we can make contact."_


	4. Not The End Yet

_**A/N: **_Short chapter. More of all stories should be coming soon. School's nearly out for me, and thats means more writing time. :)

* * *

**4**

"_Hun, you're in love."_

"_Don't make fun of me."_

_

* * *

_

It doesn't take a Time Lord's brains to decipher that the TARDIS is displeased about the whole Situation. However, this, this seems like she's going a bit too far. The Doctor would've thought rubbing salt in his fresh wounds was a bit below-the-belt for the TARDIS.

"_This is Emergency Programme Four,"_ pronounces Rose, her voice all static and humor, stepping into the role of a posh TARDIS official with a grin. Her smile soon drops from her face, though. This won't be a cheerful hologram goodbye_. "If this message is playing it's because I'm dead or…"_ She trails off, her brow furrowed and her teeth biting down on her bottom lip_. "Well, I obviously would never leave you, so that can't be it. I must be dead."_

He wants to smile. He misses this Rose, the one who hopelessly devoted to him; the one that couldn't even entertain the idea of leaving him.

"_I hope…that I lived a good life. Well, if it was with you, than it must've had been good." _She smiles, looking down, defeated. He wished she wouldn't. _"If…you and I…if I never said…I l—"_ she cuts herself off, swallowing. She looks upon once more, her eyes meeting his as if she was there in the room right with him. He knows she isn't. It's a feature of this type of hologram; eye tracking. Very simple technology, really. Been around for centuries.

_Time is relative._

_Only sometimes._

Her laugh is not particulary melodic or pleasing to the ear, but precious all the same. _"How daft am I? You'll be watching this years off, and I'm gone, and I still can't say it! Thing is, I'm in love with you. Silly, human love. I hope you're not too disgusted. Silly human cooties, ri'?" _She shoots him a sardonic look, but laughs again, forced. It is obvious she is struggling between punishing him and trying to make this goodbye for him sweeter than all the bitterness between them. He wonders when she recorded this. She's got that resigned shine to her eyes, and he recognizes that red jacket of hers. That's right before the Cyberman. This recording…this was yesterday. She recorded this yesterday.

He doesn't know why that is significant, but the thought stays in his mind still.

Yesterday.

How much things change in just twenty-four hours. Such a short time, even for humans.

"_And I have to say, Doctor…you were the best thing that has ever happened to me."_ Rose smiles for real this time, all teeth and wrinkles around her eyes and nose. _"Really. All those planets and stars and moons and things, it was great. I loved it…even when it was terrible. And it wasn't just that…it was you. I made a choice, a long time ago, and it's you. It was always gonna be you, and I'm sorry, I really am – if I or…even you, forgot that."_

She looks at him, and he wants to touch her. He doesn't. He wants to, but he doesn't. Wasn't that the story of his life?

An other, distant voice sounds from the recording.

"_Rose, what are you doing?"_ She looks away, off to the other him, smiling ever so slightly as to look innocent.

"_Just…nothing. Nothing important."_

"_Right-o, then! We'd best be off. I really ought to take you to the Medusa Cascade, there are the most fantastic moons there. No time for that now, though. Fetch Mickey and I'll set the TARDIS on the randomizer and we'll be off again. Onwards and upwards! Upwards and onwards? Point is, get along and try to clean up whatever mess that boyfriend of yours surely gotten himself into."_

Did he really ramble that much? By Rassilon, that's irritating. No wonder they all left. Oh wonderful! It is clear now that he's gotten over the latest departure; he's already moved on to being inappropriately flippant! Fabulous.

Mind him, he'd have to keep a eye on his vocabularly. Rose would laugh at him if he utter a word like fabulous in—

Oh right.

The Hologram Rose glances at him once more, before discretely pushing a button on the console. The recording blips off, and the TARDIS is dark once more.

"Goodbye, Rose Tyler," the Doctor whispers to the empty air. The funniest thing about that recording; that Goodbye, as it were _(all fancy capitalization and pompous importance and finality_), is that she never actually said it. Goodbye.

She could say I love you or you were the best thing or it's been you, always you, and I hope you're not too disgusted _(he winces at _that _thinly veiled accusiation, but finds himself quite useless at denying it, and not's like she is listening anyway)_ – but she could not say Goodbye. The Final Goodbye.

How peculiar.

How silly, how silly of her – thinking that despite all of this, her death wasn't the end. Though her flesh may rot and her bones turn brittle, Rose Tyler isn't finished. Rose Tyler thinks she still has a choice. How very ultimately silly of her.

How human of her.

He smiles, a smile full of wishes and disappointment. He misses her, that Rose Tyler. He wishes she were right, that this wasn't the end. _(He leans onto the console, his fisting clenching as his eyelids squeeze closed.) _He wants to wish, but he doesn't.

He just can't. If he does, it'll kill him.

"I can see why she left you," a too-familiar voice scorns, laughingly. The Doctor whips his head up to stare in shock at the figure who has just appeared on the jumpseat. She is smiling in the most irritating way, her painted fingernails contrasting to her pale skin as she taps out a rhythm _(da da da da, da da da da), _a rhythm he hasn't heard in years. The call to war. "Kind of a cowardly cry-baby, you, with the Time War and the Daleks and Captain Jack Harkness!" She pronounces the last name enthusiastically, enunciating each syllable with mocking delight.

It can't be. Her voice – it's not static, as if she was actually in the room with him.

Her voice lowers, leaning forward towards him as far as the jumpseat allows shall she not fall off. "Did you know –well, I know you know, but let's get to the point—did you know that he can't die? You're what, fifteen hundred – by the way, lying about your age to blonde compansions is beneath you. You should know what immortality feels like. Tell me, doesn't that just kill you to think that you've put another man through all that pain?"

"Rose—" the Doctor says, but then he stops. Because he sees. The blue-green light of the console pillar illuminates the Not-Rose's eyes.

And he sees that this isn't the end. It can't be.

"You're supposed to be dead," he says.

"Funny how these things work out," she says, and laughs.

0000

In Cardiff, a cell phone clatters against concrete. It's owner soon follows it to the ground, her eyes growing distant and her vision going cold.

* * *

"_Do you love her?"_

"_Yes."_

"_Is she gone?"_

"_She's going!"_

"_But is she __**gone**__?"_


	5. Not Rose Tyler

_**A/N: **_There's a _The Eleventh Hour _reference in here...that's rather obvious and doesn't makes much sense...but I'll still out cyber cookies if you guys point in out in reviews! aha. Hope that wasn't too obvious of a plead for reviews. I try to pride myself about being not totally attention hungry. Try is the operative word in the that last sentence...;)

**5**

_"I decided as long as I'm going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly."_

_

* * *

_

She wakes, and it doesn't take her long to figure out she's back in the hub. All the members of Torchwood Three are staring at her, but they aren't worried for her well being _(she would've thought spontaneously fainting would deserve some concern, but apparently not)_. Gwen and Tosh and Ianto are a mixture of confusion and apprehension and false bravado, and Owen is struggling to look indifferent and mean. But it's Jack's face that really gets her.

He's got that face on him, that face she's seen a thousand times. The face when he's dealing with some bad guy that is threatening his or his loved one's safety. It's that icy exterior that she never dreamed she would be the object of.

"Okay, see, we are going to make this very simple for you. Just tell me Rose Tyler is."

She almost smiles, because for a moment she wants to believe that he's joking. She knows she's not. "Are you sure you're not the one who hit your head? Jack, it's me. It's Rose."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice try. When you collapsed, Owen here took a look at your DNA. You're not human. And the only reason why I'm still being nice to you is that you've taken the form of my friend, so you must have her captive somewhere." He's now sarcastic, yet another one of his defenses, and Rose can only think of is how this is very, very wrong.

"I'm not lying to you, Jack. Your DNA whatsit must be wrong, 'cause I'm human. I'm Rose."

Jack shakes his head, closing his eyes in irritation or sadness or both or not at all. "No, don't do that." He opens his eyes, and looks her right in the eye, with menace. "_Don't even try._ Because I can ring up the Atraxi right now, so start talking."

Rose blinks at him.

"Don't play stupid. It doesn't suit you. So, you have two choices: tell me where Rose Tyler is, or return to your containment cell at the AA of Xtre, _Prisoner Zero_." He reaches to his belt, and in the next second a barrel of an alien handgun stares ominously back at Rose.

Lots of times – more times than she cared to remember, Rose Tyler thought she was going to die, that there was no hope. When she spilled coke all over her favorite dress at club at sixteen, when Jimmy Stone left her at seventeen, when she was about to be devoured by gas zombies things at nineteen, when she was forced to stay behind while the Doctor ended the Time War at twenty.

Christmas day and the Sycorax. Queen Victoria and a werewolf. 51st century spaceship and eighteenth century France. A dead ship, dead emotion enclosed in steel, and a dead father.

So many times she thought she was through, and yet she was still breathing. In and out. And in. And out.

She had promised herself to live a good life without the Doctor… but now she was denied even of that. For some strange reason, Jack thought she was a homicidal telepathic parasitic alien, and she was probably gonna be zapped into ash in a couple of seconds from that fancy gun unless she thought of something quick.

Not the most dignified way to die.

"I can't think of anything to say," Rose says, and would move to sit up, if she hadn't have a suspicion that she'd just be pushed down again. "Assuming I was a telepathic parasite, I would know all of Rose's memories. I would never be able to prove anything to you. So it's rather hopeless, ri'? I should really just tell you the truth, ri'?"

Jack ignores her speculation. "Where _is_ she?" She can tell he's now more than a little angry. Ignoring the need to cry, she shakes her head. And then she has a idea.

An idea that she doesn't waste another thought upon before she acts.

"Dead," she nearly shouts, and she's shocked them all, including herself. "Killed her by my own hands, and then the Doctor punished me. He made me takes her body and know all of her life and memories. He made me be constantly reminded of what I'd destroyed." She makes sure her voice drops low, tries to make herself appear as regretful as anything. If Jack was anything like the Doctor, she was sure he'd take pity on her. "And I've learned, Jack Harkness. I've learned who Rose Tyler is, was, and I miss it. I do. And I weep for her, and for myself."

She hates to lie to him. She hates it. She hates it. But she does it anyway, because she has to. Because she's not herself anymore, anyway.

He looks at her, and Rose hopes that he's recognized her. But she sees nothing but that cold stare of a unkind stranger _(now even colder with the accusation of murder)_, and suddenly she thinks this is what the Doctor must experience every time his companion witnesses a regeneration.

"Do you really think I'd let the murderer of my friend live just because she feels some regret," Jack says, his voice something dark and bitter and a tone she'd never expected to hear from Jack. She wants to cry, but she doesn't. "Remind me again, what exactly is keeping me from shooting you _right now_?" He cocks the gun, aiming at her head. Rose looks down, swallowing. She wants to believe this is a dream. It's not.

"Jack." Gwen reaches to place a restraining hand on his shoulders.

Rose forces herself to look Jack in the eye. "Would you really kill me? Would you? While wearing the face of Rose Tyler? Wouldn't that just _kill_ you?"

He looks away, blinking, and Rose can hardly believe that this is happening. Can hardly believe she is capable of cruelty to Jack. _Jack_. This is bloody Jack Harkness she's lying to!

But it's not just lying.

He looks back to her, and it may just be the worst moment of her life. "Get out. Go."

This time she doesn't ask if he is joking.

0000

Later, Jack calls Jackie Tyler and tells her not to let her daughter into the flat. It takes much to convince her, but eventually she concedes. Rose has told her too many stories of parasites and shape shifters.

0000

There is a ghost in the TARDIS, but it's not Rose Tyler.

She comes and goes. Sometimes the Doctor wishes her image would fade forever, and sometimes he waits for her. Sometimes, he likes it when she comes.

She's not Rose Tyler, and it is wrong.

Sometimes she is with him for hours, and sometimes she only exists in his periphery, just a blip in time, and she's gone before she arrives. Sometimes he misses her.

Sometimes she laughs.

But it's not Rose Tyler's laugh.

It can't be.

It just _can't._

0000

"Somehow, I'm not quite surprised," Tosh muses, staring thoughtfully into her coffee. "Does that make me a terrible person?"

Gwen gives a half-hearted little lift of her shoulders in repsonse. "Well, everything that's come back from Jack's past has been evil, so…"

Their evening, which had been quite nice for a change – no homicidal aliens, unnatural disasters, or food poisionings – had turned quite un-nice quite quickly. There was nothing like a messy betrayal/murder of a boss' best friend to kill the mood.

They all loved him, Jack, whether they admitted to it or not, and it killed him that everytime something good might happen to him, it was always ruined.

But it was more than that.

"The funny thing is, she never seemed like a killer. That Captain John Hart, he was _well_ creepy, but Rose…"

"She was different," says Owen, suddenly. The team looks at him. He was never one for sentimental stuff like this, and it surprises them that he's defending her. Owen looks at the team, meeting the gaze of each and every one. "Tell me, how many of you was suspicious of her when she told her bar stories? When she came out of Jack's office and saw that her nose was red, 'cause she'd been crying? How many of you really thought she was a baddie?"

Tosh doesn't meet his eyes, and Ianto has nothing to say. Gwen looks at him, biting her lip. "But it wasn't her, Owen. It was just using her memories. Telepathic parasite. Just remember her eyes."

"Makes you wonder," Owen says, and turns away, back to his station.

"Does it?"

From the reproachful tone in Gwen's voice, Owen has a feeling this little outburst will make its way round to Jack.

0000

"Sometimes," she says to him one day, circling the time rotor, "The hardest part isn't letting go. Sometimes, it's coming back."

There's always a battle. Should he ignore her? Acknowledge her? Was he even sane? Did it matter?

This time he decides he will talk to her, even though is Not Rose. "And what's that s'posed to mean?" he asks. She shrugs, and smiles. Her eyes are wrong. He hates it.

"How would I know?" She disappears before his eyes, and he has to restrain himself from reaching into the empty air.

0000

Rose Tyler is dead. Now she's on the run, and it's not an unfamiliar experience, but it's not a happy one either.

Sometimes she wonders what Jack meant about her DNA.

She hates it when she wonders.

0000

"I think I get what you meant. About coming back. Nice little metaphor for the whole death, nearly immortality, regeneration thing. What a poet you've become." He tries to banter, because he forgets that she is Not Rose _(her eyes, oh god, her eyes)_.

"Not everything is about you, you know. Not everything is about death."

He's gone out to an asteroid just outside the Balkan Nebula. The TARDIS' doors are open, revealing teal and purple smokes that swirl in untraceable patterns. Very pretty sort of smog, for a nebula. It's a sort of outer space sight Rose would like, but he tries to not think about that.

Especially when she's standing right next to him, looking out at the black and purple and green, and she is Not Rose.

"Oh really?"

"Really."

He doesn't know what to say, so he thinks, instead. Thinks about the Balkan Nebula and the Pigorm Nebula and a few more otherworldly attractions that Rose would've loved. He's in a relatively happy contemplation when she speaks again.

"Say, you haven't been to Earth in a bit. I don't blame you though. Who'd want to come back to that? Rather dull, ordinary planet if you asked me. Just a watery orb of nothing but selfishness. A million others like it."

He wants to object, but doesn't. He doesn't know why. He doesn't know a lot of things these days.

"Makes you wonder why they all decide to leave." She looks at him, and he can't quite look back at her. Not anymore. Not with those eyes. "Back to that place. Letting go of all of this." She gestures to the nebula beyond the TARDIS' doors.

"Letting go is easy," he says. "I do it all the time, because I have nothing to come back to." He tries to make a joke of it _(quite casual but nevertheless enthusiastic enunciation, along with leaping eyebrows as he bounces on the balls of his feet)_, but neither of them feels like laughing.

"They're braver than you. All of them."

He's never seen it that way. "Maybe…or, maybe they're just cowards."

She smiles, and he can tell she thinks his reply is a bit more than juvenile. "There's always that fine line." Her fingernails, dark purple, tap out the call to war on wooden doorway of his ship. She makes a sound, the ghost of a laugh, and turns her eyes upon him. He looks away before she meets his gaze.

"Not always."

"Always," she confirms, looking back to the nebula.

The Doctor looks at her, and she is Not Rose _(she is Not Rose as her very atoms fade until there is nothing beside him but air)_. Sometimes he wonders.

He hates that.

* * *

_"Haven't you noticed that I'm breaking all the rules now?"_


	6. The Girl With No Name

**6**

_"Tell me a story, mama. A fairytale."_

_"So I shall, dear. There was once a golden little girl who skipped along a dangerous path, dragging a stick behind her in the rain. But when the rain stopped and the skies cleared, her older self returned to the path, and fell into the gouges her younger self had made."_

_

* * *

_

"The universe is often mistaken as being made of hard, thick lines, which isn't quite the case. The walls of the multiverse are actually porous in their natural state, and with the right technology, travel between universe is possible. However, these walls are also damaged easier than you would imagine. Too many conflicts in the fabric of time and space tend to stretch the holes wider, straining the fabric so that it is most susceptible to tears. This means what would've been just a small inconvenience can turn to a monstrous disaster, thereby endangering the existence of everything in the universe. Are you getting this?"

"Not really, now that you mention it."

"Shut up and listen, then. It's important."

0000

Before she does anything, she gets a makeover. Get hers hair cropped even shorter, not quite chic but not horrendous either. Dyes her hair a ugly, unnoticeable brown, much like the shade she had before she decided to go blonde. The hairdresser is hesitant when she hears Rose's request, the artist in her unwilling to sacrifice such nice-looking blonde locks. But it's her job, so she does. On the way out of the salon Rose stops by a convenience store, buys a pair of reading glasses, and retreats into the public loo.

There's no one else but her and theecho of her trainers in the deserted restroom, and she stops before one of the sinks, but doesn't look in the mirror. Not yet. It takes her a few minutes to successfully pop the lenses out of the reading glasses, her fingers sweaty and slipping across the the glass. When she does, she puts them on. Her fingers brush by the whisp of hair at her ears, and it suddenly dawns on her that she's cut off her bloody _hair. _She looks up into the mirror, staring miserably at the lack of her cheery blonde bob.

"Oh, god," she whimpers, and touches her hair again, full of longing and distate. "The Doctor would be so disappointed in me." The new incarnation of him definitely had a thing for fashion and hair and other useless girly things, and had often been sympathetic if her hair suffered greatly during their misadventures. He had once told her he'd been curious to see her old brown look. Somehow, she didn't think this was he had in mind.

"Though," Rose muses, " I might look a bit like him. Brainy specs at all." She studies her reflection once more: brown and nerdy and bit too depressed teenager for her tastes. "Nah," she decides, "More like Harry Potter." She's not consoled by the fact, but it makes her chuckle. That _does _sound like something the Doctor would approve of.

The door of the loo swings open with a creak, and Rose jumps like a startled cat. It's a girl her age, bottle blonde and laughing green pupils with a brand name emblazoned across her chest and a sarcastic quirk to her smirk. Rose knows her. It's Cinde, one of her mates from the old clubbing crowd.

For a moment Cinde stops, her swagger halts and her absent, self-assured smile drops. She stares at Rose, a slightest hint of recognition in her expression. Rose bites her lip, and hopes she doesn't see through her admittedly weak disguise. If she does, it's the end. Rose Tyler is supposed to be dead, and she hasn't even really thought of how she's going to disappear yet. Cinde's gaze swoops up and down Rose's ordinary image, and when she sees Rose's eyes, her expression becomes embarrassment. Like she's been caught staring at a disabled person.

"Sorry," she says, her voice hitting Rose like a ghost come back to terrorize her, "I thought you were someone I knew, but the eyes aren't right." Rose glances to the mirror. Simple, innocent hazel eyes stare back at her, the same way they've done all her years. Her hair is a horrible, terrifying brown, she's wearing all the wrong types of plaid, and she's got a dashing pair of brainy specs, and somehow it's her same old hazel eyes that make her Not Rose Tyler.

She looks back to Cinde, who is looking at her nervously. "I guess," Rose mutters, and storms out of the loo, the store, and onto the sidewalk. There isn't anywhere to storm to, though, and it is the most irritating thing in the world.

0000

"Just start over, okay?"

"Humans. Never ever use your ears, do you? There are - well, were - rips in the time and space vortex. Great big - well, actually, quite little and narrow and insignificant - rips that never ought to be there. Aftershocks."

"Like from an earthquake?"

"Exactly. A great big disaster in the fabric of time and space, leaving the fabric tattered and the timelines all twisted."

"That sounds bad."

"Oh, very. So I fixed it. Sealed up the walls forever, completely and utterly separating the universes. No more were the walls porous, no more was travel between the multi-verse safe, no more without the risk of falling into the empty Void and being lost to time forever. Just a big, blank wall. White as the Void itself - clean as paper, with no markings of a disaster ever occurring."

_(He sounds sad, she thinks, but she doesn't know why.)_

0000

Rose sees it everywhere now. Strangers, when they see her walking down the street, they stare at her like she's wrong. Just one glance to her eyes makes their own widen. Some are polite, looking away quickly with a casual cough as they try to look as unassuming as possible. Others are different. These ones stare and point and whispers. Most of them are children, looking at her as if she were one of the monsters from their storybooks.

Rose Tyler, a monster. Corrupting the Doctor, lying to Jack, totally destroying that wonderful hair of hers - 'monster' may not be such a unsuitable title after all. And what Jack had said about her DNA...

She doesn't like to think about it.

0000

Eventually, she runs out of money. Rose doesn't have many choices these days, so she gets a job waiting tables at a tiny diner in some British no-where town. The manager doesn't ask too many questions _(namely about living situation and the lack of phone number). _Rose has always been good with people, and waiting comes easily to her. Though she is receiver of many fine compliments and tips, she still has next to nothing money wise. It's only a small miracle that the local hotel owner is a sweetie and with a few careful words Rose lands herself a room to stay in with a very low rent.

Life goes on, and the days slide by too naturally for Rose. It's been over a month since she left the Doctor, and strangers continue to stare at her eyes. But every time she looks in the mirror, she only sees herself.

Sometimes she wonders if that's really _is _her _(just another resigned waitress with too many secrets)_ staring back.

She hates it when she wonders.

0000

"So you fixed it."

"Not quite. I fixed the walls, but not the timelines. There's a reason why time usually goes from cause to effect, because otherwise it gets a big shoddy around the edges."

"What gets shoddy?"

"Time and space, of course! Past, present, and future!"

"So...basically, the universe is still in danger. You didn't do a thing. Time Lord, you are, and you still don't ever go about fixing a problem properly!"

"You could say I was a bit emotionally drained at the time."

"...This is about _her_, isn't it?" He tells her about 'her' but never names the girl. She only exists in his memory, after all, and though he tells her stories, he still wants to keep her all to himself, hold onto her as long as he can._ (The Girl Never Forgotten, the Girl with No Name.)_

0000

Soon, she develops a routine, does the same thing everything everyday and the realization of it nearly kills her. She's always bored, just a bit friendless and is constantly bothered by the sensation of something breaking _(splintering, cracking, slipping, deeper and deeper)_. She gets the idea of going on adventures, maybe, just to entertain her. She can't afford the cab fair to the city, much less a ticket to any the local museums or cruises.

Just the though of managing her money sickens Rose. She would die for a cuppa of the TARDIS' brew and a visit to the wardrobe. She's pretty sure she left her favorite pair of heels in her old room.

She misses them. She misses everything. _(Him.)_

0000

"No it's not about _her_. This is about the aftershocks. Humans! You forget things so easily. Remember the aftershocks. Time is unraveling at the edges and all you can think about is my love life!"

"Guilty as charged."

"No, stop it. Aftershocks! Remember the aftershocks. They debris from the disaster has punctured tiny holes in the time vortex, and now it's gradually destroying the universe, bit by bit, until there's nothing left. You remember what that's like."

"Then shouldn't we go on and fix it?"

He looks to her. She is smiling, teasing him, even though she's aware this could be very bad. But she knows them, he and her. They're unstoppable. They always win. Unsung heroes, they are. She still thinks he's a fairytale, her imaginary friend that's saved her ever since she was a kid. Good and evil were always so far away from each other in fairytales. He didn't used to think differently.

She still believes in him, her knight in shining armor, and he wishes she didn't.

"Yes, that is exactly what we're going to do."

0000

There is a small power outage in the no-name town, and Rose's alarm clock never goes off. She wakes up twenty minutes later than she should've, and amid her panicked preparations to leave for work, her only thought is that she is so very, very late.

She usually walks from the hotel to the diner and back, but this time, she runs. Her converse make flapping noises against the sidewalk, and it feels so good to run with a purpose again. And then, quite unexpectly, she is somehow hurtling toward the ground.

A rather inelegant fall, right onto her very own ass, bruising her elbows in the process. She lies there, her right cheek against the pavement, and doesn't move. Doesn't see the point in getting up. She'll just go to work and live another day of a life she's always promised herself not to have. She also, though, doesn't see the point in lying like a idiot in the street. She lifts herself onto her feet, brushing off the dirt from her jeans. Rose starts to walks again, but her foot is caught on something once more. She saves herself before she falls over again, and looks down to see what's been causing her to trip.

It's a metal disc, embedded into the pavement, with a metallic, yellow sheen. Impulsively, she leans down to grab it, and finds that she is able to pull from the pavement without too much effort. If that wasn't fantastically strange, as soon as the disc falls into her hands, the metal begins to warm, as if responding to her touch. She distantly remembers the incident with her first Dalek, and absently hopes the disc won't suddenly produce a gun and shoot her in the face. Upon further inspection, she sees the disc resembles more of a huge yellow medallion, as it hangs from a heavy chain. In its center is a silver button, that glimmers as she turns the disc about. Frowning, she runs her hand over the button, and starts when she feels the mountains and valleys of what must be words engraved into the metal. She runs a finger along the words slowly.

B...A...D...W...O...L...F

Utah. Adam. The Gamestation. Daleks. Hologram of him. Jack. Mickey. Mum. The TARDIS. And the light, the light from her dreams...

The same strange presence from before forces all of the images in her head, the one that had given her the idea of going to Torchwood, the very event that had ruined everything. And now it's making her remember that day at the Gamestation, the day before the Doctor regenerated. Not that she remembers much about it, anyway. Just being sent back home and then the light, and this song...

Her eyes begin to itch. Bad Wolf. Rose remembers it now, those words that had followed her everywhere. She saw them, right before she got the idea to tear open the TARDIS' control panel. Bad Wolf here, Bad Wolf there, she said. It was a message, saying she could get back to him. The words Bad Wolf had led her to the Doctor. So she had torn open the console...and after that she woke up in the TARDIS. Back with her Doctor.

She's shaking now _(her eyes burn and itch and burn)_ and the disc bobs around in hands, bobs around in her vision. She catches a glimpse of her eyes, reflected in the shiny surface of the silver button. She sees them now, her eyes _(the same old innocent hazel eyes)_. Wrong, and unnatural. Not Human. Not Rose.

Bad Wolf. Those words. She remembers it now. Those words.

_It's still a message,_ she thinks. _I can get back to him. I can get back to the Doctor._

After all, the Doctor can fix everything. (_She still believes in him, her knight in shining armor, and he wishes she didn't.)_

She clutches the disc, pressing the silver button with one palm. The street blurs around her, dripping away from her vision like melting chocolate. The image flickers before giving away to a whole new world.

0000

"Bad Wolf," she reads, the words swirling on the TARDIS's monitor. "What's that, then? Message from a planet or something?"

He smiles. "She thought it was message, too. Words to lead her across time. Bad Wolf here, Bad Wolf there."

He's blabbed on about _her _for at least half an hour, interweaving between thinly-veiled heartbroken references to his lost love mixed in with ramblings about the mechanics and material of the multiverse itself. And now suddenly everything and everyone's in danger. Again. She wonders how many universe-threatening disasters he experiences in a month.

On second thought, she doesn't think she wants to know.

"And was it a message?"

His gaze falls to the floor. "If only." Though the words are tiny, he says them in that voice that she recognizes all too well. She swallows, now regarding the words on the monitor with suspicion, wide-eyed.

"What's gonna happen, Doctor?"

He doesn't answer her. "If only," he utters again, the two formidable words slipping grimly from the harsh line of his mouth.

* * *

_"But wouldn't that hurt the little girl, mama? Why couldn't she step around the holes in the road?"_

_"Because she could not remember she had made them."_

_"That doesn't make much sense, mama."_

_"Life never does, child."_

**A/N: **Next time: Rose and the Doctor are reunited...


	7. Disappointments

**_A/N: _**Woo. Update. We are nearing the end, my dear readers. As promised, the Doctor and Rose are reunited in this chapter, but more than likely not in the way you would think.

**7**

_You and I walk fragile lines._

_Never thought I'd see them break._

* * *

The Doctor, after a particularly bitter adventure _(too many blondes, too many deaths), _circles the time rotor in the TARDIS console room, adjusting useless knobs and levers. Even though he's not affecting the TARDIS' operations at all, he still likes to feel useful. _(So many deaths, how is he ever useful? Ever a hero?) _He allows his eyes to fall closed. This would be the time when Rose would sling an arm around his shoulder, brew him a cuppa, and make him forget everything.

Of course, Rose's not here.

It's a strange thought. Strange words, like they shouldn't belong in that order. He misses her, but that's beside the point.

...Was there a point?

He can't remember.

"Doctor?"

It's Rose's voice, but he has come to refer to the ghost as Not Rose. She is a ghost, after all. More than likely just the TARDIS' way of dealing with the separation from her favorite human by manifesting an image out of huon energy and stock memory banks. What he didn't understand, was why the Not Rose could go manifest somewhere in the TARDIS he didn't visit regularly, like the Duck Garden with no ducks or the nail salon whose existence he had consistently forgotten to mention to Rose. But no, the TARDIS had chosen to torment him. Like this was _his _fault. Well, it was. No it wasn't. Wasn't his fault he fell in love with her.

That was all Rose's fault. _He _certainly wasn't looking for a relationship when he met her. Okay, he was, but not in _that_ way. He merely wanted a companion, not a...a...whatever Rose was to him.

"...You have to answer me eventually, you know. You always do."

He does.

"What did you mean before, about 'that fine line?'" He always starts off refusing to look at her, tries to pretend she doesn't exist.

"Good and evil, of course. Fine line between the two."

"That's what I thought."

"Yeah, I was wondering why you asked. You're usually a step or two a head of me with these sorts of things."

She almost seems like she's laughing at him, but he doesn't turn his head to check. "You're wrong, you know. Morality doesn't tip one way or the other so easily. Good and evil - galaxies apart."

"You'd be surprised." He turns to her, to ask her what she means, and she turns to him, and their eyes meet without him intending them to at all.

Her eyes are hazel. Normal. Rose's eyes.

She is smiling slightly, and he can't bear to hope that she might be Rose. No longer Not Rose, but the real, real Rose.

"Don't you wonder, Doctor, what happens to them? The companions that you leave behind, or the ones that leave you. The ones that are lucky enough to get through you and survive. What happens to them? Do they go on, being themselves, as if you haven't changed them at all?" Her smile is vacant and steely, but she has Rose's eyes, and he wants to believe. "Of course not," she continues, sharply. "But wouldn't you love for it to be so? Wouldn't you love if they all went on to have fantastic lives?"

He nods, speechless. Her eyes, so familiar, and warm. Rose's eyes. She has Rose's eyes.

"But they don't, do they? For some, yeah, but not for all. Because some leave, just the few, because they've stopped believing in you, believing in the fairytale. The Doctor and his blue box, battling away the monsters. It sounds like a fairytale, doesn't it? But's it's not, is it? Because of good and evil. In fairytales, they are far away from each other, and we all know that isn't so."

"You're wrong."

"Am I?" She is still smiling, and her eyes flash dangerously in the golden glow of the time rotor. Still the same hazel, and he isn't sure why it changes everything. "Am I really? You've seen it before. Ever since the beginning, the willingness to kill and destroy. And I don't need to mention Satellite Five, do I? Rose Tyler," says the girl _(He doesn't know who she is, anymore)_, "Not your ordinary innocent princess. What happened to her, do you think? Did she go on and live the rest of her live as a shop girl, eating chips and watching telly, with that constant burn under her skin? The burn of the Time Vortex? People go mad, Doctor, staring at that. What makes you think Rose Tyler is any different?"

"She doesn't remember!" He shouts, raising his fist and bringing it down onto the side of the console. He shakes, breathing, for a terse moment, before he withdraws his hand. That had hurt. Not one of his smartest ideas.

She is still looking at him, not at all phased by his outburst. "You're right. But I do, and I'm a lot stronger than her."

His jaw drops open, silently _(he knows who she is)_, but she is already gone, vanished.

0000

"Doctor!"

He looks up at her, as if just realizing she had been speaking. He smiles, a humorless quirk of the mouth. "Yes, Pond?

Amy Pond, terrified and not a little bit irate, stares him down from her place at the console. One hand whips out to point at the console monitor, where the same two words spiral over and over in a swirling chaos of pixels. "What's happening, Doctor? Something bad, yeah? Those words, yeah? Tell me what's happening!" Her eyes are wide and her accent is thicker than usual, and he has no doubt it's because she's a bit stressed. He doesn't blame her. The Doctor knew that he had a habit of becoming a bit theatrical in his explanations, turning formulas into fairytales. From what he's told her this past half-hour, she has a great right to be a bit jumpy.

"Calm down, Amy. It's no biggie. Just relax, and we'll sort this out as it comes to us."

Her right eyelid twitches. "N-ng buh," she stutters for a moment, shocked by his nonchalance and a tad outraged. This was her fairy tale, he could at least take it seriously. "_No biggie? _What happened to the end of the multiverse?"

"Ears, Pond. Use them. The solution will come to us."

She's about to open her mouth to give him a proper scolding of terrifying her and making no sense and being purposefully vague, but then she sees something flicker out of the corner of her eye. She turns her head to stare at it. It's a funny sort of light, and her brain hurts a bit when she realized she's seen it before. From when she was a kid. She...she can't remember.

The light shimmers and grows, spreading until it's in the form of a girl.

"Amy Pond, meet Rose Tyler, stuff of legend, the Valient Child, the Abomination-"

The light slowly falls away from the girl, and she is no more a golden apparition.

"Rose Tyler," the Doctor is saying, relishing in the drama of it all, "Bad Wolf, shop girl, solution to all of our problems, and even the Temporary Queen of -_oh my god _what happened to your_ hair?"_

The girl, who really does have a rubbish hairstyle, looks around frantically, blinking in confusion as she takes it all in. Her gazes flicks from the time rotor to Amy to the walls to finally the Doctor, and that is where she stops. There's a noise, and Amy realizes the so-called Rose Tyler has dropped something Amy hadn't even realized she had been holding. It's a yellowish sort of medallion, and the light from the console hits the metal button in such a way that Amy can read the inscription. Two words. She swallows, dread settling low in her belly.

"Oh, like you get to talk, changing on me again!"

Amy looks up again at the girl, who's apparently now processed what the Doctor's said. Her accent is distinctively London, her hair is just all types of disaster, and she's wearing plaid. Somehow Amy had not expected this from the Doctor's apparent past girlfriend, the impressive and brilliant, but nameless mistress of his heart. The one he thought about every time they'd been close to the end of their lives, the one that he talks about in the past tense, because it's over. He's given up on them, on her, and now she's nothing but a particularly regretful shine in his eyes.

It's this legendary creature that is standing only meters in front of Amy, and she's wearing plaid, red and itchy-looking and screaming of lob cabins and maple syrup. Amy can't help but feel a bit cheated. But then Rose tilts her head, and something strange occurs, and Amy's own eyes widen.

Her eyes, Rose's eyes. There is something wrong with them. They shine in the most horribly unnatural sort of way in the light, and it's possible one of the most weird things she's seen in her life.

The Doctor is pretending he isn't noticing it. "Oh! No! No no no no no. No regeneration." He pauses. "Well, yes, actually, I did regenerate. But I didn't. Not really. It's, ah, complicated," he scrambles to explain.

Rose shoots the Doctor a look that makes Amy want to giggle. Something like exasperation and anger and not a little bit of love. The light in her eyes flickers once more, a jolting reminder of the danger, and Amy feels a headache coming on.

"I mean, ah, I'm from your future. Basically. You'll see me, him again, non-regenerated. It's not over for you yet. Still got a few years before I go and change. Not nearly the end yet for you." He smiles at her, and it's unlike any smile Amy's seen on him before. The sort of smile one would use for nostalgia for sunny days.

Rose nods, a tad breathless. Amy doesn't blame her. "But-but it's the end for you? I'm gone?" He smile fades, his expression twisting pensively.

"Yeah," he say.

Rose blinks, and starts to saying something. She stops herself, though. There's a nervous tension in her jaw, and a pitying golden light in her irises, and she blinks once again before speaking.

"Well this is rubbish," she declares, in a rather brave attempt at cheer. Apparently just noticing she dropped something, she picks up the medallion again. She holds it up, eyes flashing. "I found this. Said Bad Wolf. Thought it would lead me back to you. Guess it did, but you know. Wrong timeline." Her expression falls, and all Amy wants to do is give her a big hug. She knows what being left behind by the Doctor is like, and she would've loved if someone had hugged her then.

The Doctor breaks the silence in the most inappropriate way possible, naturally. "I'm sorry, I really am, but your _hair. _What happened?"

Rose laughs, and Amy watches the Doctor's face. He looks so different, and she can't quite put her finger on it. It has to be from being around Rose. She suddenly feels very out of place.

"Um," she says, "I'll just let you two catch up." She shifts away from them. Rose looks guilty for a moment, but then smiles gratefully as Amy moves away to her bedroom.

When she is gone, Rose is about to explain, but the Doctor beats her to it.

"Rose, a storm's approaching."

She stares at him. "...What do you mean? Aren't we in the vortex? I didn't know it could rain here."

"No, no no no." He approaches her, making his way down various ramps before reaching the spot where she stood. It almost surprises her. The other Doctor, the proper Doctor, he had always wanted to be close to her, always wanted his hand in hers. It shouldn't surprise her that this one is the same. _(It does anyway)._ "That's not it," he's saying, "A storm, as in a disaster. A great big disaster in the fabric of space and time, and it sends out aftershocks across time." He takes the yellow disc from her, the pad of his thumb slipping against the back of her hand. His hands still possess the same coolness. It shouldn't surprise her. It does. She looks up at him from under her lashes, and feels very silly for thinking about how he touched her when he's talking about the end of the universe or something. "Aftershocks like this. It's called a Dimension Hopper. Allows you to travel between universe, that is, when the walls are weak. It fell through time from the storm in your future to you, to lead you back to me."

"Bad Wolf," she says, her voice sounding too loud in her ears. "We never worked it out, did we? What those words mean?"

His eyes haven't left her face since they were alone. They stare at each other, as if sizing each other up. She notices he's wearing a bow tie. The other one sometimes wore a bowtie, with his tux. Tweed. She doesn't like tweed. It looks itchy and reminds her of crotchety old people. She looks back up at his face, and he's got that look on his face when he's lied to her.

"I made you forget, Rose. If I hadn't you would've died."

Her eyes widen. "What? What do you mean? What happened?"

He looks pained. "When you looked into the TARDIS' console, you looked into time itself, the whole vortex. It consumed you, made you a goddess. You came back to the Game Station, disintegrated the Dalek, revived Jack, and scattered the words Bad Wolf throughout time and space. A message to lead yourself there. You saw all of time, all the infinite possibility, and your human brain couldn't take it. So I took it out of you. And I regenerated."

"You never told me." She tries not to make it sound like an accusation.

"I didn't think it was important."

"Well it was!" she shouts, eyes afire. "You must've not gotten it all out, because now my DNA is changed. It's not human anymore." It's news to the Doctor, judging by his face. "When I left you I sought out Jack. For some reason I fell unconscious, and his medical team examined me. Jack thought I was an alien, pretending to be Rose. I had to lie to him, pretend I _was _a telepathic parasite just so he wouldn't shoot me. I had to pretend that I killed Rose Tyler, and regretted it, just so I could get out of the Hub alive. And then he called my mum. He told her I wasn't to be trusted. That I wasn't human. I had to go into hiding. That's why the hair's here. And the clothes."

Tears start to well up, and she hates herself for crying so easily. His arms snake around her, pulling her to him, and when her cheek brushes against coarse tweed, all she can think about is how he's not wearing pinstripes or leather and why oh why does he also have to keep changing on her.

After a long moment, he clasps her hand and motions her to follow him into the darkened corridors of the TARDIS.

0000

There.

It's your basic London flat, in one of the cheaper but decent neighborhoods. Red brick. White paneling. It's not inconspicuous but it certainly doesn't draw attention to itself. It's a wholly unremarkable flat, expect of course of the fact that it's Rose Tyler's former residence.

And Rose Tyler, he has learned, is very remarkable indeed.

He's done his research. Disappeared in early 2005, presumed murdered by boyfriend Michael Smith. Returned exactly a year later with an unidentified older man. Gave the suspicious excuse of "travelling." Mother Jacquelyn Tyler withdrew her interest in case, despite police disapproval. Michael Smith also disappeared around a year later, never found again. Rose Tyler returned in early 2007, but has not been seen since.

But that's not the interesting part, not at all.

The real interesting bit about Rose Tyler is there are countless records of her, from all over. From a eyewitness report of Queen Victoria proclaiming her Dame Rose Tyler , or the statue of her circa 100 A.D., to a record of her from the Time Agency itself: _Rose Tyler. Human. Seen always with the blue box. _

It doesn't take him long to assume the impossible. She must be a time traveler. Such impossibilities have stop surprising him long ago.

Indeed, Dr. Owen Harper reckons he'll never be surprised ever again.

0000

"Oi, wake up."

"Ngh."

"_Rory. Wake up._"

Amy pokes him in the side with one finger. Her husband only shifts in the slightest, and continues to lightly snore. She pokes him again. He sighs, or maybe he snores, and rolls over to glare at her.

"Hello," she says, smiling. He's not amused, but he smiles back at her, because he loves her. Because she's Amy.

"What's so important that you have to stab me with those talons in the middle of the night?"

"Time is relative."

He sighs. "Just get on with it, would ya?"

"Rory, a crazy light appeared in the TARDIS but it was really just the Doctor's dead girlfriend from the past who is like all weird and not human and apparently time itself is imploding."

"Well. The Doctor's not human. Couldn't his dead girlfriend from the past be an alien too?"

"Nah, she's supposed to be human. He told me so. She liked chips. And she's a Londoner."

"Ah." He pauses. "Did...did you just say time is imploding?"

"Apparently."

With that, he reaches for his wardrobe.

0000

"Jackie Tyler?" He asks when she opens the door, even though he knows it's her.

"Yes?" Her accent is thick, and she's wearing a tracksuit, and her hair is a bit of a disaster. Not the stereotypical parent of a child destined to become a time traveler, but he supposes real life isn't all films and fairytales.

"I'm Dr. Owen Harper, a member of Torchwood Three in Cardiff. I'm here to talk about your daughter."

She tenses automatically, her normal flirtatious nature becoming guarded as soon as her daughter's name slips from his lips. "She not's here," Jackie says, her tone like venom. "I listened to your stupid Captain Jack whatever he was, all right?"

"No Mrs. Tyler, I'm not here to make sure the supposed parasite is here." She flinches at his use of the word 'parasite.' "Actually," he continues, "I believe that your daughter is still alive. I believe that Jack Harkness was wrong. I believe that we can find her. And if you still give a shit about your daughter, you'd best let me in because there's no doubt she's in great danger."

She lets him in.

0000

He leads her to the TARDIS Infirmary. It's very much like it was before, with white washed walls and a polished floor. Shelves line the walls and two examination tables stand in the center of the room. Various equipment whose purpose she never asked was scattered here and there. She sits down on the left table, feeling quite awkward once again.

The Doctor is busy searching for something on one of the shelves, paying her little attention. _(Too familiar of a feeling for her tastes.)_

Nervously, she goes to rub her neck, and withdraws her hand, once again momentarily startled by her hair's absence. She puts her hand back in her lap, and busies herself by examining a jar of pickled something-or-something on one of the shelves.

"Found it!" the Doctor exclaims, grinning joyfully. He brandishes a metal cylinder, and she faintly recognizes it. He moves to the control panel for the machinery that sits before her, and inserts the cylinder into a convenient slot.

Suddenly, a tingling sensation overcomes her, and pricks of gold swarm her hands _(then her arms, and her shoulders, and her vision)_. "Nanogenes," she breathes, remembering. the Doctor had boughten a set after a particularly rough adventure. He let the nanogenes scan her while he rambled about having a sure way of healing her if something went wrong.

Like a bad haircut.

Like a DNA change.

The itchy feeling soon subsides, and she experimentally runs the palm of thumb along her palm. Her skin tingles, brand new and pink. She smiles, and looks up to see the Doctor brandishing a hand-held mirror. Rose has never been so glad to see a bad dye job.

"Thank god for peroxide," she giggles, and he grins at her.

"Indeed."

She takes another look in the mirror, and notices it immediately. She has no idea why she didn't see it before. "And my eyes..." Rose says, touching the space just above her right cheekbone. Her eyes are still hazel, just hazel, with no hint of uncertainty. She likes looking like herself.

"I restored all of your human DNA. The Bad Wolf's influence is now _completely _removed from you." He lowers the mirror, placing on the space next to her. "Everything's back to normal now."

His tone has turned strangely acidic, and Rose is only too sure of why. She wonders why they never come about anything outright. Then she remembers the one time she _did _tell him exactly what she was thinking, and how it led to her leaving him.

He's watching her like she still hasn't returned. Rose gets that feeling again form the console room, that expectation. She knows he's disappointed that she's not _his _Rose, the one that remembers all the steps she hasn't yet ran, the one thathe can be with without fear of ruining the timelines.

"Rose?" He says her name in that way he does, and she hears his words again.

_Gone. _

It could mean anything. She knows he won't tell her.

"Yes?"

"I-"

There's a crash from the hallway, the sound of two roughly human-sized objects falling to the floor after tripping over another as they hurry to the Infirmary. The Doctor is half away across the room in an instant, moving away from here like a teenager caught with a girl.

"Rory!"

"What?"

"You tripped me."

"Accidently! You were the one that pulled me down with you."

"You can't blame me. I'm the wife."

"Is that how marriage works?"

"_Yes._"

Rose smiles at the Doctor, who has started to look a trifle embarrassed.

"So. Couples. Isn't that too domestic for ya?"

He fixes her with a defensive glare. "I didn't know she was enagaged when I asked her to come_!" _

0000

Three years ago, another Rose Tyler is standing on the pavement in front of the Powell Estates, twisting the strings pressed against her palm into a dreadfully troublesome knot.

* * *

_Something's made your eyes go cold. _


End file.
